Getting High (7 page)

‘You haven't got one at home?' Bonehead asked.

‘No.'

‘Why not?'

‘Because the bathroom is too fucking small. I've only got a poxy shower. I like a bath. You can sit in there for ages doing absolutely nothing.'

‘You should do what Jason did,' Bonehead said, lighting up a cigarette and offering the packet round.

‘Why, what's he done?'

‘He bought this huge cast-iron bath and him and his mate couldn't get it up the stairs. So he said, “Fuck it,” and plumbed it in in his sitting-room. He's got his bath in the sitting-room, he has. He's got a tray put across it and he sits there, eating his dinner, watching TV and having a bath. His wife went mad. Can you imagine it? She's sitting there having a bath and his mates come round. Don't worry lads, it's only the missus. He's off his tits.'

All the time, Scott sat silently at the back. As the coach pulled up outside the hotel, situated along the Blackpool sea front, the growing nerves inside him, reminded him that he had about four hours to go before his live debut as bass player with the biggest band in the country.

Outside the Empress Ballroom, there were a few fans waiting, and inside Liam still hadn't arrived.

As soon as Noel walked into the venue, the first thing he did was to run on-stage, plug in his guitar and start playing. Bonehead, Whitey and Scott followed.

After the soundcheck was finished, the four of them went for a meal downstairs. Now that they had money behind them and the gigs were getting bigger and bigger, Oasis could afford to take a catering company on the road. They used the firm, Cat And Mouse, whose staff was mainly women.

As they finished their meal, Liam walked in. He had driven up with Les, a Mancunian who works for a promoter and also acts as part-time driver for the band.

‘Fucking hell,' Liam said, walking in, ‘you should see Les's motor. Big fuck-off Rolls-Royce. Just drove up in it. Fucking ace. What's for dinner?'

‘You got a Rolls then?' Noel asked. ‘We're paying you too much fucking money, mate.'

Les sheepishly grinned. ‘I got it cheap,' he offered.

At seven the doors opened and a stream of kids came running in, straight to the front of the stage. That's where they would stay until the band came on. By seven-thirty the place was packed. Outside the touts were offering tickets for £50.

The first group on was Smaller, who the crowd received politely. ‘Buy me single,' Digsy said to the crowd, ‘I've got a wife and three kids to feed.'

Records filled the spaces between Smaller and Oasis. Noel was the first on-stage, followed by Bonehead, Whitey and Scott. The crowd reacted like supporters who have just seen the winner scored in the last minute of the game. It was a sound that Oasis were going to hear for the indefinite future, the sound of people ecstatic just to see them, to be there.

They launched into ‘Swamp Song', and halfway through Liam made his entrance, swaggering in time to the tambourine he banged against his leg. Again, a crowd eruption.

For the rest of the gig, indeed for the rest of their tour, the crowd would jump up and down, up and down, up and down, a relentless, seething mass of people fuelled by joy, alcohol, drugs and the pleasure of pure abandonment in Oasis's music.

The set list was the one that Oasis would stick to for nearly a year. The first half was upbeat and anthemic: ‘Swamp Song', ‘Acquiesce', ‘Supersonic', ‘Hello', ‘Some Might Say', ‘Roll With It', ‘Shakermaker', ‘Round Are Way', ‘Cigarettes And Alcohol' and ‘Champagne Supernova'.

Five hit singles, five coruscating B-sides and album tracks.

Then the band exited the stage leaving Noel sitting on the stool that Jason, his roadie, had placed on-stage. He picked up •his acoustic guitar and launched into ‘Wonderwall', ‘Talk Tonight' and ‘Cast No Shadow'.

This was the day of
Morning Glory
's proper release and already most of the crowd knew the songs. They had obviously taken the day off to learn their lines, do some real homework.

With the conclusion of ‘Cast No Shadow', the rest of the band walked back on except for Liam. Noel had now decided to follow his solo set by singing another song but this time on electric guitar.

Thus ‘Don't Look Back In Anger' rang out before Liam returned for ‘Live Forever', and then their finale, the Oasis rendition of John Lennon's ‘I Am The Walrus'.

There was no encore. There rarely was. The crowd moved out, bubbling still with excitement. Backstage Alex Higgins, the ex-world champion snooker player, was talking to Bonehead in the dressing-room. He was telling him that they should cover the Troggs' ‘I Can't Control Myself'.

‘You'd do it well, you boys,' he said in his thick Irish brogue. ‘Reg Presley's a great guy,' as if that was another compelling reason, ‘he's really into crop circles.'

‘Yeah, Noel likes a drop of that as well,' Bonehead replied. Liam came over and shook Higgins's hand. ‘What you up to, like?' he asked. ‘What you been doing?'

‘Still playing. Next game is on the 15th.'

‘Who against?'

‘Exhibition game. Come and see us.'

‘If I'm around I will,' Liam replied. ‘I'd do anything for you.' Higgins beamed.

He had once lived in Burnage, and Noel could remember singing Christmas carols outside his house which he had had fitted with triangle-shaped windows.

‘No doubt he told you,' Noel said, ‘”yes, I remember Noel singing. I said then, he'd be a great star. I could see it then, really I could.”'

Noel was now talking to Johnny Hopkins, his press officer.

‘Why didn't you play “Morning Glory”?' Hopkins asked.

‘Liam can't get the notes, they're too high,' Noel laconically replied. Then he was out of the dressing-room and into the production office.

Noel Gallagher loves to control his own space, who enters and who doesn't. After show dressing-rooms are an anathema to him. Too many friends, too many people.

He far prefers to wind down in places such as the production office. There he'll talk to tour manager Maggie or Marcus or maybe the baleful-looking Trigger, the then road manager, or roadies such as Jason or Jacko.

The band, once they've cooled down, differ. They often meet people. It's mainly for Liam. He's the one who loves to entertain, to talk, flirt, have a laugh. Silence is deadly for him. So is not being at the centre of things. He can't stand it when his mind is going ten to a dozen, his ears are ringing and there's no one to vibe off. Silence becomes his enemy then. He wants life and noise around him. Noel just wants his space.

Back at the hotel, the bar was full and drinks ordered, but there was little for the hotel to complain about. No fights, no trashing of tables or chairs, no insulting other guests.

At one point, Alex Higgins approached Noel.

‘When I get out of it, Noel,' he asked, ‘can you get me a room?'

A friend of Noel's butted in and asked Alex whether he was still playing.

‘Yes, I am. On the 15th. In King's Cross.'

‘Whereabouts in King's Cross?'

Higgins looked at him incredulously.

‘In the fucking snooker hall. Where else?'

Noel fell about laughing. Over to the right of him, some guy nudged him and started showing off his facial scars. ‘This one was from 1981, razor fight I had. This one was at football...'

Noel nodded in all the right places. Then he announced he was going to get a drink. He wasn't seen for the rest of the night.

The next morning on the coach, Noel explained his disappearance.

‘I had to get away from the guy with the scars. Doing me fucking head in,' Noel told Bonehead.

‘What about that Alex Higgins?' Liam said. ‘He's off his tits. All that money and fame and shit and he's blown the lot. What a fucking way to go. I hope that happens to me. One big fucking blowout. Top.'

‘You did well last night,' Bonehead said to Scott. There was a general murmur of agreement.

‘It was only when we got there that I realised what I had got myself into,' he revealed. ‘Didn't think about it before, like.'

He returned to gazing out of the window.

The coach was heading for Stoke. At the hotel Robbie Williams was waiting in the foyer for the band to arrive. This was his hometown and now, since quitting Take That (or Take That quitting him, whatever), he had money in the bank and time on his hands.

He greeted the band, arranged to take them for a drink in a pub around the comer. On the way there the locals recognised Williams. There were admiring glances from the girls, who-the-fuck-do-you-think-you-are? looks from the boys.

But everyone who checked Oasis gave them a smile, a thumbs-up.

In the pub, a quarter full, Robbie used the word irony.

Bonehead said, ‘Don't know what that means, mate.'

‘It's Jamaican,' Liam said. ‘They say it when they're pressing their trousers. Iron the knee.'

Noel interrupted. ‘No, no, it's Irie-knee,' The brothers laughed. The band smiled. The mood was good. Expectant.

A pint later and the band went back to the hotel and then on to the coach for the trip to Trentham Gardens.

It was there that a TV crew from BBC2's
The 0 Zone
were waiting for the group. They were shooting a half-hour documentary on the band. Again, as soon as he reached the hall, Noel rushed on-stage, grabbed his guitar and started hammering out loud chords. Lost once more to the world.

In contrast, Liam loathed soundchecks. He would come up and sing one song, maybe two, and then leave it at that. Soundchecking was boring. As long as his mike and monitor (the on-stage amp that allows the band to hear themselves) were in order, then fine. The others could sort out the rest.

Sometimes, Liam would walk round the hall checking out the sound. He did this at prestigious gigs. Other times he just seemed to disappear.

Tonight catering had been placed in the upstairs part of the hall. It was a huge room where
The 0 Zone
people had taken over a corner and were busy setting up their lights and cameras.

This was a TV special in which Liam and Noel would be interviewed separately by the presenter Jayne Middlemiss, and Bonehead, Whitey and Scott together.

Noel was the first to be interviewed but every time they went to ask a question, the soundman stopped them. He kept picking up Liam's voice from right across the hall.

‘Can you keep it quiet?' the producer asked, half-heartedly shouting to the singer. Liam, as if still at school, kicked a chair.

‘Not getting enough attention, then?' Noel bitterly shouted over to him. Liam giggled, pretended to kick the chair again.

‘I'm warning you,' Noel threatened.

Finally, they were ready. Noel wore his dark brown suede jacket and gave a lively performance. When asked who his heroes were, he instantly named the four Beatles, his mam and Paul Weller, the former frontman of The Jam and The Style Council. He denied having an argument with Liam about the recording of ‘Don't Look Back In Anger'. And then, to prove it, he shouted across to Liam, ‘Did we have an argument about “Don't Look Back In Anger”? We didn't, did we?'

‘Yeah, we did,' came the sullen reply.

Turning back to the interviewer, Noel said, ‘Yeah, we did.' He paused. ‘That's going to start an argument now.'

Noel talked about how he shouldered the responsibility (‘Someone's got to carry the can'), and then made a telling observation about his work. ‘I don't write songs because I want to or I need to,' he firmly stated, ‘I write songs because I have to.' Noel asked to be remembered as someone who did daft things, supported a crappy football team, wore great shoes, ‘and did it'.

Now it was Liam's turn and he looked suitably nonchalant and disinterested. He wore shades, a dark blue top and incessantly swigged on a bottle of water. His voice was gruff and curt.

‘Don't you ever feel like dancing on-stage?' the interviewer asked.

‘I didn't join a band to dance. If I'd have wanted that I'd have joined Take That.' Of Blur, Liam said, ‘I won't play the game with students. They' re not worthy of being mentioned in the same breath as us.' And on being a ‘sex symbol', he snorted, ‘Not interested, I'm a singer, me.'

Naturally, the casually bitter way he said those words would send a million hearts fluttering when the show was broadcast.

Out of the other three, Bonehead spoke the most. He blamed the press for the Blur I Oasis spat, and for hyping up the argumentative side of Liam and Noel's relationship.

‘People going mental, that's the buzz,' he said of live work. ‘That's what it's all about.'

Yet the most telling part of the afternoon's filming was not to be found in any answers. It occurred during Noel's interview. As he spoke, one of the crew tripped over a wire that had somehow got entangled around a heavy light stand. The wire tightened and the stand toppled right on to the presenter's head with a sickening thump.

‘Oh my God,' someone shouted as the lamp then lazily thundered on to the ground, leaving the woman clutching her head in shock and agony.

As people rushed towards her, Noel burst out laughing at her misfortune. ‘I'm sorry...' he spluttered between laughs, ‘but it's... ‘ It was as if he had had an attack of the giggles.

One of the crew, kneeling down and tending to the woman shot him an accusing look.

‘Well, you would have laughed if it had been me,' Noel pleaded. ‘Wouldn't you?' He looked in all innocence at the TV crew and no one there had any idea how to answer him.

The Stoke gig was tighter and better than Blackpool. And for the first time, when Noel came on-stage, he walked to his guitar with his palms turned upwards, asking the crowd, like a footballer who's just scored, to give him even more applause.

The band and audience had a ball. No one was disappointed that night. Watching from the balcony, halfway through ‘Supersonic', a young lad came up to congratulate Digsy on Smaller's support performance that night.